


Sons of Sodom

by katuman



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Family, Friendship, Historical Hetalia, M/M, Mild Gore, Multi, Sexuality Crisis, Smut, Spicy Profanity, The Roaring 20's, aka the complete economic collapse of the Weimar Republic, cabaret politics, historical setpiece, slice of life in the tenements, so many assassinations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2018-12-01 12:12:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11486145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katuman/pseuds/katuman
Summary: Prussia and Hungary tango to the postwar economy. Germany falls facefirst out of the closet and onto a dick. Everything goes to hell in a handbasket and back.





	1. Mother Berlin

 

_May, 1921_

Prussia tossed his cigarette butt into a pail of dirty water and looked up from the stoop. "Look. All I'm saying is: I spent five years in the trenches, covered in shit. Getting pissed on by a girl in a corset is not gonna do it for me." The dingy brick façade of a Kreuzberg tenement loomed over him and his brother—shoestring budget, turn of the century. The windows were curtained, the sides festooned with laundry lines, and Lutz palmed the dirty cabaret pamphlet with its corseted vixen and shoved it into his pocket ambivalently.

"Mm. So this is a... _temporary_ arrangement," he muttered, a little too quickly and a little too softly. Prussia opened the door for them with his foot and was hit by a wall of unwashed body odor and cigarette smoke. High grade nostalgia that, and—God bless him—the kid didn't so much as flinch

"Yeah. Pretty sure." Prussia nodded, for Germany's benefit, and motioned for him to follow. The corridor was narrow, the stairs narrower still. Little brother pressed himself single-file to the wall, rucksack clutched tightly, probably more out of courtesy than suspicion of being robbed by the indigent, and said not a word more. Their flat was unnumbered, somewhere at the end of the hall to the left, facing the street. This was the best the new government could do on short notice: a little bit of natural light and a communal bathroom one floor below. He figured there were worse places to be in this world.

The flat was a wallpapered square of old corkboard, with a cot on either side of the window. Opposite that; a coal stove and a yellowing rendition of the Madonna and Child. Prussia lifted the peeling print by one corner and observed a crack that arched all the way up to the ceiling.

"Bad news, kid." he smirked. "Beds are too small for cuddling." The humor fell flat, and Germany only grunted, throwing his knapsack onto the bed on the right. Without ceremony he knelt and started patting down his mattress, looking for traces of bedbugs. Prussia watched from afar with a grimace.

Lutz had shot up like a weed at the turn of the century, and in the last years of the war he'd been reduced to a long, crooked carrot. Turnips and reparations had taken all of the color out of his face, leaving him gangly and awkward. He was too tall for this place, but no longer had the physical presence to fill it. Germany grimaced and lowered himself onto the cot. His face was tense with the discomfort of someone determined to make do.

For his part, Prussia shoveled some coal in the oven and set about trying to light it. Kreuzberg or not, it was a roof and it beat out the Belgian frontier for sheer livability. A spark managed to catch. The Virgin and her boy watched impassively over his.

" _How can they do this to us_?" Germany whispered.

"The Reichstag's not made of money—,"

"Not _them_." he interjected. And by the low timbre of his voice Prussia figured it was never intended to be a question at all. Four years, civilized Europe in ruin, crowns rolling free in the gutter over some dick measuring down in the Balkans, and now the two of them footing the bill for Britain and France.

"Because suck it up," he said soothingly. "That's just how this shit goes." Prussia stood and wiped his coal-blackened hands on his trousers. The battered leather bag sagged from his shoulders, heavy as sin, but even the dull ache in his shoulders was nothing compared to the ache of anxiety in his chest as he set it down on the floor. Folded into the nest of clothing and cigarettes, carefully wrapped so as not to make a noise, were twelve little circles of silver, each one the size of a griddle cake. He counted them again, one more time just in case, under the stony sound of his brother's childish, disapproving silence.

All twelve.

Prussia let out a breath he'd been holding since he'd stepped off the train. Didn't matter that he'd held the bag like a baby long after his hands had gone numb from the cold. If he couldn't see the money—if he couldn't reach out and touch it—then he could never be sure it was _there_. And it was. Twelve shitty little circles whose Hohenzollern crest had been melted away. In a past life: candlesticks. Silverware. All the good shit that had lain waiting eleven months out of the year for Christmas dinner at Potsdam.

Lutz didn't say anything, he just rolled over onto his side. He’d already balked himself blue in the face, their last night at the estate, watching Prussia squat by the the fire, pouring a witch’s brew of his watch chain and Cecilie’s spoons into a cast iron pan.

"You get half," he said tacitly.

Ludwig didn't even wait for him to start counting. "I don't want it."

"What. You don't wanna eat?" Gilbert snapped at him, only half joking this time around. "Or shit, maybe buy yourself something that fits?"

Ludwig scowled. "Those weren't our things."

"Neither was the booze or the stationery you gave me for Christmas." Prussia huffed, wondering at what point between Antwerp and Brussels Lutz had developed a taboo against pillaging. "Mole for mole, at least some of the family silver was." he said casually, parting the stack. "Consider this our last fucking paycheck. Make merry."

His brother stared at him blankly, but his teeth showed through his lips. "I don't fucking _want_ it," he said, and with a sound of absolute finality he turned away from him, facing the wall.

"Well alright," Prussia said tartly. "Put me in charge of your finances why don't you."

He swaddled the silver gently into one of his nightshirts, and stowed it back in the sack. "It'll be sold in the morning. You change your mind, you'll have to ask nicely for cash."

Germany shrugged noncommittaly.

On the other side of the wall, a baby started to howl.

* * *

Leaning into the doorframe, Germany pulled a damp cigarette out of his pocket. The alley was acrid and wet, thick with the sound of day laborers marching off into the city through small furrows of garbage. He was alone and that suited him fine.

Berlin had fared better than Paris or Maricourt. Lined with limbless beggars and littered with refuse, it still staggered on. The Belgian countryside lay covered in slag like a cake smeared in buttercream icing, but his brother's city had swollen with tenement buildings. Berlin had fared better, or so Germany liked to believe.

He rolled the thin paper between his fingers and stared at it listlessly. He was beginning to understand the appeal of Prussia and Hungary's vices, the strangely sweet smell of her pipe tobacco and the way his brother sagged in his coat and filled the house with tar and urban smog. The poor man's cigar, Gilbert called cigarettes with his cavalier grin. Now throw another log on the fire, kid. Don't let the silver get cool. There were times when he wondered if Gilbert thought anything truly sacred—history, heritage, his own life, or the dignity of his Potsdam estate.

A quiet "Excuse me," broke through his reverie. In the corridor behind him stood a young girl with a baby and a cheerless expression. Embarrassed, Germany stumbled off to the side. She lowered her head, readjusted her bundle, and shuffled past him without any further exchange. He watched her go, wearing a furrow into his cigarette. A light rain started to fall. He waited for her to disappear around the corner before closing the door behind him and turning the other.


	2. Beartrap

In that early spring of 1921, Berlin was home to two million people and two hundred million books. This all seemed very poetic to Germany, as he skimmed the narrow shelves of the classics. Every other weathered spine in the bookshop was Homeric verse. Antigonus and Aristophanes, Livy and Virgil. A dozen other names he had overheard in drawing room parties, but had never been able to study to any degree of satisfaction. His education had always been guided and practical, with Prussia’s occasional interlude about Tacitus. The literature gave way to history, to Gibbon and the study of Rome, to the dark ages of Civilization, the Holy Roman Empire, and all the many things that were before his time. He passed the economics section with disinterest, the 19th century with nostalgia, the sparse shelf of the 20th with a pit in his stomach and a pointed gaze in the other direction.

A back room was filled wall to wall with paperbacks: genre fiction. Germany smiled fondly at the dozen or so westerns he recognized. In the cold earthen purgatory of trench life, his dreams had been punctuated by red desert mesas, until Bill Cody and Old Schmetterhand bled together, and the weather in France turned his dime novels to pulp. He meandered. He picked through a few that he recognized by authors whose names he forgot, and reminisced as he moved down the stacks. Bildungsromans, general fiction. He checked his watch, and realized with a sinking feeling of dread that he wasn’t expected… anywhere really. Gilbert didn’t ask, know, or care when he planned to come home. The chain of command had fallen apart, the Republican government was reorganizing, and no one knew quite what to do with him outside of a monthly meeting and a pension that might or might not be arranged.

Well, at least he could now _read_ all he damn well fucking wanted.

He put May back on the shelf and plucked out a novel. The slim volume was plain-cloth and unassuming, blue with black lettering that read: _A. Hanneman_. He flipped through the first chapter and took in a rosy portrait of university life in Heidelberg, 1911, when the prospect of war still seemed a little exciting. Its neighbor, a peeling low-quality paperback called _Graceful Traveller_ , was about a tryst between a married man and a two married women, ending in tragedy no doubt. He put it back in its place and withdrew _Among Fellows_ , opened it at random, and was met with the image of a man sucking cock.

Germany snapped the book shut with such force that he made himself jump. Heart frozen and thundering in his throat he whipped around, stumbled over his feet, and backed into the bookshelf.

Nobody saw that, he tried to tell himself over the noise in his head, over the cold fear gripping his backbone. Nobody saw. Dryly, he swallowed. Holding the book close to his face, and himself close to a corner, he pried it open again, to another page. Carefully. On the left was another illustration, of a young man with dark hair. He lay back with his arms over his head, his chest bare, smiling with his face tilted sensually to the side. The excerpt underneath read _“Kurt resolved that he and I should become better friends that summer_.” On the opposite page was a love scene.

Germany closed the book sharply again. He scanned the space around him, the short hallway leading into the main buying room. No one was watching him. The skin at the back of his neck felt hot all of the sudden; the collar of his coat had become tight and uncomfortable. He shoved the book back in its place but the impression of it burned in his hand like hot coal.

Germany stared at it on the shelf, where it certainly didn’t _look_ like coyly titled pornography. He entertained the idea of categorizing it elsewhere. He didn’t have anything against pornography in particular, he told himself. It was just that it didn’t belong here, in _this_ particular place. He tugged on the novel again. It slipped from the shelf with devilish ease. The worn paper spine, the young man with dark hair and full lips sank into his palm. He forgot that clerks couldn’t read minds. He felt like a fucking criminal. He might have been. He suddenly couldn’t remember if these things were even allowed to be published. As Ludwig he turned on his heel with it surreptitiously pressed to his chest, the realization began to dawn; there was nowhere else in the back room where the book could conceivably go and, what was worse, he…. couldn’t let go of it.

Any minute now, the shopkeeper might see him.

In the crook of his arm it was so fucking small. Cheaply printed, like a student’s chemistry textbook, dog-eared in places. God help him. _God help him_. He stared at a crumpled handful of pfennigs and marks. Shaking, he lay them down on an adjacent bookshelf, tucked the contraband into his pocket, and marched out of the store without making a sound.

He made it all the way down the Ritterstraße too, before he started feeling remorse.

* * *

  _One hundred thirty two billion. Gold._

Prussia stared grimly at Fehrenbach. Fehrenbach stared at the wall. “Well,” he rasped, feeling instinctively for a cigarette and some last vestige of good-hearted cheer. “Least it’s not two hundred and twenty.”

“No matter. The Reichstag will never accept it.”

“So we dispute it,” said Prussia. Why the fuck had Fehrenbach been elected, after all, if not for his ability to talk his way out of this sort of shit? He watched him preen at his mustache. A nervous tick.

“We offered the American government fifty billion marks, and our full cooperation in rebuilding the formerly occupied areas. The parliamentarians feel we’ve already given Britain and France far more than we owe. And the Reparations Commission… has decided that we haven’t even come close.” Constantin Fehrenbach was 69 years old in human years, and in that moment Prussia suddenly understood what they meant when they said the man looked “far older” than his actual age.

“I’m sorry,” said Fehrenbach. “But this is the end.”

Prussia sat up straighter. There were still nine silver griddle-cakes in his bag, and hundreds in marks stuffed into the lining of his coat. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

The chancellor folded his hands defeatedly. “I will resign.”


	3. Bulletproof

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTES: Much of Joseph Wirth’ s dialogue was taken directly from original transcripts. Thanks again to historia_vitae_magistras for translating his speech.

_August 1921_

When Erzberger was gunned down in the Black Forest, the mark was still trading at seventy-five American dollars. Prussia looked down at the old finance minister's coffin and prayed that it hadn't devaluated. It was standing room only in the Catholic cemetery in Biberach, crowded as it was with the exodus of Berlin's whole parliament to this countryside town. Erzberger's wife and grown children were present. The flag of the Weimar Republic flew over them all. Prussia glanced at his brother. Solemn was not a new expression for him, but even in the summer heat he was unnaturally pale.

"He was a good man," said the priest. They all were—when they were dead—Prussia thought cynically. Not a week ago half of this mournful assembly was up Erzberger's ass about signing the armistice. "He was a faithful husband and a loving father to his children. He worked hard in all that he did, in the face of challenges that would daunt most mortal men, and brought Germany peace."

Peace was expensive, as it turned out.

"He is with God now."

And his murderers sunning in fucking Hungary where the police couldn't reach 'em.

"Ruhen in Frieden."

"Ruhen in Frieden," his brother repeated.

The body of Matthias Erzberger was lowered into the ground, his friends in the Reichstag lowered their hats, and Prussia closed his eyes and thought of the Somme. The words came to him from a thousand leagues away, five hundred years ago, in the rough Latin of the grandmasters at Marienburg. _You will not fear the terror of night. Nor the arrow that flies by day. Nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness._ Erzberger's wife and daughters finally broke.

_He was so fucking sick of Psalm 91._

And now it was Wirth's turn to speak. The new chancellor commanded attention and Prussia saw the same bitter vein in his neck as he felt in his own.

" _We are one nation_ ," he said. Prussia bristled. It was a figure of speech. "And we will not allow Matthias's death to divide us." He smoothed his moustache with a heavy-handed motion, ran his hand down his chin. “The death of this great man can not, and _must_ not be the rallying point of nationalists in our sacred fatherland. Kaiserism must die and be buried same as we must bury this hero of moderation.”

He could feel the kid snap upright beside him. _Face forward, like a good soldier_. Wirth continued. His fingers itched for a cigarette.

“They said he was as rounded as a bullet, but that was not bulletproof. But his cause? His cause remains impenetrable, unbreakable: the cause of strengthening, improving and reforming our sacred fatherland.”

A cable had come through just before the start of the procession. Berlin socialists had called for a general strike. Wirth knew this, but none of them knew how many exactly. Thousands. Ten of thousands maybe.

“We must be one nation and one cause as we push away from the pig’s war of the old Prussian ways—“

Fuck’s sake, _this_ _again_.

“—one nation and one cause. We must banish all loyalty to the house of Hohenzollern from our hearts and our electors. We _must_ have unity!”

A wave of muttering agreement spread through the rows of the crowd. Prussia took the cue to uncurl his stiff, aching fists and applaud. Lutz followed with restrained enthusiasm. He was unreadable but for the dark shadow of social tensions in his cheekbones, under his eyes. The left, the right, the monarchists, the accusatory malcontents of society sharpened every angle of the kid’s face. God, he needed a drink. Both of them did. The heat was starting to get to him, and the weight of silver in his black funeral coat was becoming a real pain in the ass.

* * *

They bought honey schnapps at the town liquor store and settled under the shade of a tree. The air was thick. The parliamentarians had finally left them in peace. Prussia smoked a cigarette, loosened his suspenders, and prayed it would be enough to get drunk.

“He’s really got a way with words doesn’t he.” he muttered into the bottle. Lutz, currently in the midst of deep-throating his own schnapps, just grunted. Prussia leaned back and took another long, contemplative drink. “Sometimes I wonder how he can look me in the face.”

Germany’s shoulders tensed with discomfort. “It’s… not you.” He motioned helplessly. “It’s the _idea_.”

“I _am_ the idea, Lutz. It’s the same fucking thing.” The sweet pungent fumes filled his nose, blotted his sense of smell, but all in all, the drink did little more than give him a buzz.

Germany shrugged.

Prussia shrugged. Right the hell out of his jacket, shoving it aside. He leaned back and closed his eyes. August was humid, and the light filtered pleasantly through the leaves, through his eyelids. He was so fucking tired. Truth be told, he couldn’t remember the last time he wasn’t.

“Do you still write to them?”

Prussia stirred. “What?”

His brother was looking at him, swinging his half empty bottle lazily on his knee with a soft but forlorn expression, and a hesitation like he’d been waiting to build up the courage to ask. “Do you still write to Cecilie and Wim?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “Why?” He thought back to the speech. “You think Wirth has been reading my mail?”

“I don’t know.” said Germany.

They both drank. “Cecilie still asks about you, you know.”

“Does she.”

“Mm. They’re living in Potsdam. Her and the kids.”

Germany nodded. “Tell her I’m... well.”

Prussia scoffed. “Might as well tell her the empire’s being restored, if you’re going to lie. Either way, she’s not gonna believe you.” He paused, closed his eyes again and said softly: “…you don’t just stop writing to people you’ve known your whole life.”

“I didn't _say_ you should stop,” his brother said sharply. But that he hadn’t written at all to the Kaiser’s daughter-in-law was implied. He was a German republic being haunted by an old Prussian ghost, and he couldn’t afford to show anything that resembled loyalty to the Hohenzollerns.

The St. Martin’s church clock struck five times in the distance.

“Our train,” said Germany.

“Fuck the train,” Prussia retorted, but his brother was already trying to get to his feet. Not very well, Prussia noted. He straightened his shirt, grabbed his unfinished drink and clasped his brother by the arm to steady him. “Fuck. Look at that,” he almost smiled. “ _Unity_.” Germany snorted.


	4. Toast

**December, 1921**

_When Germany dreams, he dreams of the home where he grew up, the sound of the river rushing under the trees and moonlight spilling over the lawn and bleeding through the white mortar seams of the brick. He remembers lingering there in the summer under the dark library window overlooking the lawn, tipsy with champagne and defiance, in the company of men who did not care for parties and looked good doing it._

_“Ludwig,”_

_A voice, and a name, and the memory of a lingering touch slip through Germany's fingers. He can’t make out his finer features in the dark. Only the shape of him: a soft, shaven face, broad chest in an officer's uniform pressed, and the clean simple smell of his hair as he kisses him. His mouth is warm and sensual and viciously prying, moving a hand down between his legs._

_"Wait," Germany gasps. "No. Stop." The fingers pause on the inside of his thigh, right over his pulse. "We should stop." He doesn't want to._

_The man licks his lips, catches his. His fingers move slowly upward, to brush against Germany’s chin. "Are you in a hurry?"_

_His mouth is dry. "I—I'm not—." but he can't form the word. If he does, it is real. And if Germany allows it to be real, he is lost. “I’m… really not." he mutters, breathless, insistent, into the nape of the neck. He clears his throat. "I like... women.”_

_“But not me?” the soldier asks, playfully tapping his knuckle against Germany’s cheek._

_“I, uhm.” His hand closes over the officer's, but he can't let go. It feels good in his. Familiar. Heavy, too heavy, too warm. He moves too affectionately, too patiently, as if leading him in a dance, though his back is firmly to the wall and they haven’t moved from the spot. “I do not dislike you.” he whispers. In the way he had never disliked Liszt, or Schumann, or Brahms. There is truth in there._

_“I like you very much, Ludwig.” the man says, catching his breath. “God help me, I always did.”_

_He is lost. Sinking his tongue into a mouth he can’t see, the face of a man who now exists only in memory, pulling his palm down between his legs, drawing his hand along the length of his swollen cock, grasping for a figure in the dark. I like you too, he wanted to say, grinding against him, moving in and out of the tight circle of his fist and so close—so fucking—nearly—God—fucking—until he slips over the edge, to where not even God could redeem._

 

Germany woke startled, with a paperback book on his face and his hand on his cock. And he lay that way listening for several minutes— unmoving and mortified—before he realized that by the grace of almighty God, he was alone. He uncurled his hand, wiped it on a corner of the sheet, and wondered aloud was wrong with him. After a moment of consideration, he peeled the book from his damp forehead and tossed it under the bed. Gilbert had left the coal stove burning before he had left because he preferred their firetrap to be hotter than hell.

Germany sat up in bed slowly, his mouth dry and limbs still heavy with sleep, and pulled a pocketwatch from his coat. It was 4:00 in the afternoon; he had done absolutely nothing of value all morning.

He eyed his cold cup of coffee on the hunk of wood that Gilbert had placed between their beds as a makeshift breakfast table. There was still half a roll left uneaten and, next to it, a postcard on which his brother had scribbled a note. "Went out to get dinner. Left you some putty. Fix the damn wall."

Germany looked at the Marian print in its cheap wooden frame and grimaced. The hairline fracture it was intended to cover reached all the way to the ceiling now. It would be a cosmetic repair job at best. But it wouldn't do to argue about it on Christmas.

* * *

The wind slapped at Prussia like the balls of a dog scrambling over his face. He weaved in and out of the holiday shopping crowd, many marks lighter now than he had been that morning, but his rucksack was pleasantly full. A solid half a kilo of ham—give or take a few grams if the old Rhinelander had cheated him—a glass jar of milk, and a half stick of actual butter. The nutmeg might have been wood shavings. He had heard somewhere that technically all nutmeg was wood shavings, but he'd fucking take it. Ham didn't taste proper without it.

Prussia readjusted his pack and stood at the intersection a moment, watching wagons and cars struggle to make it through the sopping dirty porridge of snow. He kept his hands in his pockets until he could feel fingers again, curled around a garlic bulb, like a solid, sharp-scented reminder that things could be… comfortable.

He and Ludwig had spent Christmas of '19 and '20 in and out of the barracks and the chancellor's office, getting utterly shitfaced as a new government struggled to form. Prussia drank until he forgot he was hungry. Germany drank until he forgot he was Germany. A real fucking family holiday two years in a row. He thought back to little Lutz at the dining room table in Potsdam—back when he didn't have to hug his damn knees to fit them under the table—and how much he had loved the baked apples and how he always insisted he was old enough to have them with brandy. Prussia thought about all of that as he walked, and tried not to think about being a liar.

He had told his brother that their accommodations in Kreuzberg were temporary, and a part of him had always toyed with the idea that if he kept his head down and cooperated the Reichstag might overlook one of their two fatherlands being a Junker. But Prussia was, above all things, a cynical man. He had known it was coming. And in early December, it came.

The mail clerk had handed him a large, heavy envelope and a curious look. The address was Cecilienhoff and the packaging was a lot less discreet than his usual post. Prussia waited to open it only so long as it took him to step out of line and put out his cigarette. The envelope contained two pieces of paper. The first was a statement from A. M. Baumann, partner in property law. The second was a letter from Cecilie.

" _I'm sorry_." were the first and the last that he actually read before the air left his lungs.

Her lawyer was curt. " _Regarding the legal status of the — Estate at —, Potsdam_ ," it said. " _No official record of inheritance can be established between the original landholder (Gilbert Beilschmidt) who was granted the property in January of 1704, and the private citizen (Gilbert Beilschmidt) asserting ownership in 1921. The estate has no current holder in the eyes of the law; it cannot be considered a holding of House Hohenzollern, and would in a court of law be ruled federal property subject to the current claim by the German Republic._ "

" _Gilbert_.” Cecilie said. “ _We don't have a case_."

Prussia had torn the letter in half. The memo, the envelope, all of it, in a single untrembling motion like a swordsman cutting straight through the backbone and into the block. It felt good. It felt better than drinking, better than fucking, better than being alive. He slumped against the post office wall, wheezing with laughter that just wouldn't come, clutching the mangled pieces in his hand. The clerk looked at him with alarm. He inhaled, plucked the soft blue feminine stationery out of the pile, threw the rest in the trash, and walked out.

He walked to Volkspark Friedrichshain and kept going, back and forth down the paths without any sense of direction, past happy Berliner families, past men without limbs, staring at nothing and not daring to sit. He had known it was coming, but for a little less than a year he had wanted to convince himself otherwise. He wandered like that until dusk, until his eyelashes froze and his dry lips started to crack.

He was fucking pleased now, remembering how he'd burglarized his own ass so thoroughly the night he and his brother left the estate. He might have lost the silver like a dumb fucker in Biberach but he still had his letters, his photographs, his trinkets, his flute. All the little objects of sentiment that would never be sold to pay reparations. And that was enough. It could be enough.

He remembered where he was suddenly, staring grimly at the intersection as the dry winter wind drew blood into his numbing face. He shook a small flurry of snow out of his hair and remembered how to breathe again. Christ.

Cecilie had _fought_ for him, he reminded himself as he rounded the corner. She had tried. He couldn't have asked for more. The end of the monarchy came and went like a wind through her pompadour and when it settled, she put away the crown she'd been promised and entered the new decade with headgear less prestigious but far more fucking pragmatic. Her children had not joined Kaiser Wilhelm and the prince in their exile. She stood between her son and the Reichstag, between Gilbert and Wirth, and had the gall to demand her worthless cunt of a husband's right to come home. Cecilie was a goddamn human miracle, as far as he was concerned. But human miracles were still only human, and his solemn thank you and the Christmas cards were still sitting under the bed.

Prussia made it another few blocks before he finally allowed his hand to relax. His cramped fingers had worn all of the paper skin from the garlic, leaving no more than a smooth, naked bulb. There was nothing he could do about it now, was what he told himself. Pick your battles. He looked down the street towards the tenement buildings. _Pick Lutz._

They were going to lose Silesia by New Year's. Without it, the government could no longer pay.

And there was no use wallowing in the things he couldn't change.

* * *

Germany set the table with the silverware from their mess kits, such as it was. His brother crouched near the stove minding the ham and potatoes. He came home with little more than a triumphant black market smirk, his pale hair was still damp from the snow, his face blotchy and red—the happiest Ludwig had seen him in days. They began drinking almost immediately.

The beer was good for something out of a bottle; the schnapps tasted like they had been ladled out of a gutter and funneled through bone ash. Having already peeled the potatoes and now left with nothing to do, Ludwig sat back on the bed. There was a meditative intensity to the way Gilbert worked and it fascinated him. He slumped against the wall and tried to socialize.

“I didn’t know you knew how to cook."

“Pickelhaube porridge didn’t clue you in?” Gilbert chuckled, taking a swig. “I can make ham like when you were a kid and I can make coffee; that’s about it. The day you start asking me for something that’s not nostalgia food is the day that I’m shit outta luck.” He looked up at the ceiling approvingly and back down at the sauce. It was the best thing Ludwig had ever smelled in their firetrap of an apartment, and if he closed his eyes he could imagine for a moment that they were actually home.

It was not the finery he missed—something he’d realized in the trenches many years back—nor any veneer of refinement that was cast aside the second Prussia’s elbows and boots went up on the dining room table. It was the familiarity of Christmas in the only real home he had ever known. The place where he had grown up marking his height in the doorframe, until he finally grew too old for such things and outgrew his brother entirely. The place where he’d learned politics over dinner, met people, met soldiers, and dreamed about going to war. Dreamed of being one of them. Being _with_ one of them.

His throat closed before the drink could make it all the way down.

“Hey. Food,” Gilbert said, bluntly yet ceremoniously as he laid out the plates and the dented meat-can full of ham. He looked so proud of himself. “Eat it and don’t fucking die.”

“Thanks,” was his automatic response. Alcohol made him braver—or _dumber_ —he was never sure which. “Can we talk?”

Gilbert slapped a potato onto his plate. “If it’s gambling debts, no. You’re shit outta luck.”

“It’s not that,"

“Then we can talk.” Gilbert sat down on the cot, elbows right on the table the way they only were when no one was watching, his eyes not even wandering into his plate. Ludwig recoiled a little under the openness of his gaze, and tried to come up with a lie.

"I..." he though about all of the ways he didn't want to say it. He though about all of the ways he was afraid his brother would brush it aside.

There was no reason to tell him. Or anyone. Some things were perhaps better off existing in quiet corners, underneath beds, in the unlikely corners of bookshelves where they didn’t have to be talked about. It was fucking Christmas dinner for crying out loud and they were sitting in a hovel, and all he wanted in this _fucking world_ was to know that maybe, in at least _one_ way, his brother wouldn’t think that he was a fucking disgrace.

"I think I like men."

"Yeah, I know," Gilbert said, firmly.

His breath caught in the air. " _Oh_.” The hot, uneasy prickling at the back of his head did not dissipate, but he no longer really heard himself anymore “Well, um." He was an idiot. "Good. I wasn’t sure if it…or…” Ludwig decided to save the conversation by shoving half of a boiled potato into his maw. " _Gufhgt_ ," he reiterated, one more time, just to reassure himself that it was before everything turned into glue.

His brother reached across the table and laid a hand over his arm, his face... sympathetic. "Was it the mountain of porn under the bed that prompted this realization, or did you just get lucky?"

And with that the food went straight back into Ludwig’s nose. " _Mhrfugher_ —!" he sputtered. His brother's rough barking laugh hit the wall of the apartment with almost physical force. "GLHBRT."

He _wheezed_. "Jesus Christ, Lutz. I knew the Good Lord made you real fucking awkward but don’t tell me he also made you so dense as to think that I wouldn’t—." Gilbert let out another howl, pounding his fist on the table. “ _Lutz_. _Look who you’re fucking talking to_. I can't even—You _knew_ about me and Fritz."

"I knew you were _close_ ," he scowled in protest, wiping little bits of chewed food and embarrassment from his shirtfront. "I… didn't want to presume."

"Didn't want to _presume_ ," Gilbert hunched over the table, boneless with mirth. "God you’re fucking adorable.” He dabbed a bit of ham around the edge of the plate and popped it into his mouth, "You know why they called me the Kingfucker?"

Ludwig shook his head.

" _Cause I fucked the king_."

“Thought it was an epithet.” Nations had a way of judging each other. They all did it, he heard, but they judged each other nevertheless.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not _factually true_. I was with him… for forty-six years.” he said, the laugh lines in his face growing slack. Like the words weren’t meant for his little brother, but Gilbert alone. “And it was good.” He closed his eyes, opened them again. “I’m just saying. I _knew_. _You_ knew. Figured I was the last idiot on the planet whose judgment you’d be afraid of.” He drank.

Ludwig shrugged, folding his arms around his knees and hugging them closer to his chest. “I didn’t know what you’d think.”

“Happy for you.”

There was a starchy stain on his sleeve. Ludwig picked at it. “Christ. I thought you might think poorly of me.” _I did._ He probably still did, a little, when he actually bothered to leave the house during the day.

“There is _nothing_ you could do, that would make me think that.” said Gilbert, without even pausing to think.

He felt warmth in his stomach, more filling than what little of the potato he had managed to swallow, and more rich than any childhood memory. A heavy weight melting slowly into the floor. "Didn’t it ever bother you, being this way?” he asked. His brother was older. His brother had once been a _monk_.

"Didn’t think about it enough.” said Gilbert casually, picking a chive out of his teeth. “And by the time I did, I figured God had more important things to be worried about.

Ludwig smiled. Prussia’s Christ was a capricious one, well-meaning but conveniently distant. But it wasn’t Him that Ludwig had always feared. God was a judge. It was men who were His executioners. Ludwig had always thought his brother a brave man. Now he wondered how much of it was pure spite and recklessness.

“You never felt… wrong?” he asked, trying to swallow before he started tearing up and really making a fool of himself.

“Sometimes. Didn’t stop me though.” Gilbert looked at him, his mouth pinched, like he was gnawing on jerky, or humoring a child.

He knew he should shut up, but he couldn't. “And you don’t think there’s anything wrong then, with… this. Me.”

“Nope. Don’t need a book or a doctor to tell me that either.” Gilbert cleared his throat. “Yeah. Okay. That’s enough feelings and shit. Merry Christmas.”

"...Merry Christmas." I love you. Ludwig nodded stupidly and smiled into his drink. Then he remembered. “Oh shit. Shit. I didn't—“

“Yeah. Me neither.” Gilbert gestured under the bed with his fork. “Bought out all the dirty cowboy novels in town, didn’t you?”

Ludwig scowled and decided that he was not going to dignify his brother with a response.

“So don’t worry about it.” said Gilbert. He didn’t stipulate what, but that had never stopped Ludwig worrying before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Historia_Vitae_Magistras for providing some assistance with old Prussian cuisine.


	5. Part I: Wallotstrasse

_June 1922_  
  
The evening before it happened, Otto Braun poured him a drink and asked what it meant that there were two Germanies.  
  
Braun was from Königsberg, true, but Prussia had been asked this question by four different men in as many years and had begun to eye their peace offerings with suspicion. He let the whisky sit on the table and folded his hands under his chin.  
  
"There aren't." he said. "There's one Germany... and one Free State of Prussia."  
  
And he let the word hang there for his President-Minister, in its nebulous place between the old order and the greater half of the map.  
  
"There are other states," Braun observed, his bespectacled eyes tracing the long river Rhine through the heartland. "Where are they now?"  
  
Prussia stared at the bottle between them. “Now they're just him."  
  
_Now they're the Kuppenheimer catalogue boy._  
  
Walking along the avenue, Prussia watched the kid slick back his hair with his fingers, once, twice, four or five times, tucking his vanity behind his ear. The pomade added five years to his brother's face on a good day, but every word that came out of his mouth knocked him right back to the ripe age of twenty, and the goddamn nervous tics knocked another one or two years off of that.  
  
"Quit it," he said.  
  
Germany started. "Quit what?"  
  
“Making yourself look pretty for Rathenau.”  
  
Germany lowered his hand with a scowl. He looked exceptionally hung over and about in as good of a mood as Prussia himself. “I’m—”  
  
“Yes, you fucking are.” Prussia cut in. “It’s a tic.” He shoved his own hands into his pockets, found nothing, cursed God. Christ, these little things didn’t used to get to him the way they did now. He didn’t like it. “Just quit preening.” he said, a little less sharply. “Quit… doing idle shit with your hands, alright? It makes you look inexperienced.”  
  
Baby brother opened his mouth and closed it again. Good boy. The war had taught him a thing or two about choosing his battles. Taught both of them, maybe; because Prussia hadn’t made eye contact with half the damn cabinet since before Christmas.  He showed up, they grudgingly gave him a leper’s pension like they did Lutz, and off he went stuffing it anywhere and everywhere that his soul felt the absence of silver: in the walls, in the lining of clothing he was less likely to just fucking leave lying around, in the depressions that had started to form in his mattress. Sometimes picking your battles was what it took to get paid.  
  
Turning onto the Wallotstrasse, he gave his brother a nudge. Germany looked at him solemnly and averted his gaze. Prussia hoped he wasn’t waiting on an apology, because he sure as hell wasn’t getting one. “Hey,” he said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Try to look intimidating or something. You know, like a soldier.” Like fucking security detail.  
  
Germany bared his teeth and half-humored him with a grimace. Overall effect was akin to a peacetime officer taking his first giant shit after Tannenberg. “How’s that?” he muttered, knowing full fucking well that a couple of Boot-whores pulled off the Potsdammerplatz could have done a better job and with twice the enthusiasm. Prussia stopped just short of whacking him upside the head. Sarcasm was his virtue, not Ludwig’s.  
  
The stupid tree-lined residential street had a lick of spring to it. A taste of summer warmth on the other end of middle-class clothes-lines. There were pear trees blooming in Silesia, he thought bitterly.  
  
“Is that his car?” his brother yawned, gesturing at a ruddy-colored convertible making its way down the street in absolutely no hurry, a single passenger and a driver.  
  
“Better not be,” Prussia grunted. “I told him to wait.”  
  
“I think that’s his car,” Germany hummed less-than-helpfully.  
  
Prussia swore. “I’m gonna fucking kill him.” He hissed, shifting from a lazy stride to a quick-time. “Come on. Pick up the pace.”  
  
The car slowed down as it approached the intersection of Königsalle, putting them just within shouting distance but just outside the range of Prussia’s muttered Catholic oaths. “HEY!” he hollered. “ _Herr Reichsminister!_ ”  
  
Rathenau’s head swiveled, looked around him before he caught sight of him and the kid. He turned back to his driver, said something that made the Dodge come to such a sudden stop that he lurched forward.  
  
No.  
  
Wait.  
  
Took a second to realize, but it wasn’t for him that they’d stopped, but for traffic.  
  
Another car had rolled across the intersection. A long six-seater, grey. The fucking idiots had cut them off at the turn;three of them, piled up into the car. One of them raised his arm in the air, and the other, he…  
  
  
  
  
He had a submachine gun.  
  
  
  
  
The explosion ripped the doors off the side of the car and blew out the glass, rained down in upholstery. He went down in no-man’s land. Knees. Belly. Elbows. “—!” he shouted at Ludwig. Whatever the kid shouted back at him he couldn’t hear it. But the grenade and the— gunfire. _Gunfire_. _Get the gun. Sidearm_. They had thirty two rounds. Maybe fifty. Shit. Shit. He fired. Both hands, steadied himself. But too fucking. Too _slow_. The driver swerved. Both of the fuckers riding shotgun were wrenched back in the passenger seat: his shot only grazed the car’s chassis.  
  
Prussia raised his head and for a moment, locked eyes with the barrel of an MP fucking 18.  
  
No cover.

There was no cover. He threw himself down, raised his weapon, and fired. Felt the air pop like champagne overhead, again and again, banging on his swollen eardrums. God help him —if the Luger was ever going to jam the fucking. Not now. _Not now._ For a moment, for a fucking moment he had the gunman’s fucking head within his sights. He didn’t have to think. He pulled back the trigger, he prayed like he was raised to pray, and he almost, nearly fucking got him but the six seater peeled out, firing a haphazard trail, and went screaming down Königsalle; no pop, no bloody mist, no skull on the pavement.  
  
_Fuck._  
  
He exhaled. Had to remember to do that. Inhaled, arms tense. Movement, the sound of somebody running. He swiveled around with his weapon raised. A man fell backwards onto the sidewalk, arms over his his face. Civilian. Bystander. He let out a wail that Prussia didn’t have to hear to understand. _Oh God, don’t shoot me. Don’t shoot._ The world came rushing back, filling in the rest of his field of vision, filling his ears with the rush tide of clamor and cries. People filling the street. Bystanders. Ludwig.  
  
“Lutz!” he barked. He spotted him, low to the ground where he should have been, fucking unarmed and not getting his ass in the way. “Lutz, are you okay?”  
  
Kid raised his head, wilted and wan, like he’d never been shell shocked to hell and back at the Marne. Prussia raised his voice, cracked it like a whip over the crowd “ _Ludwig_!”  
  
His eyes snapped into focus. Good. “i’m fine.” he half-yelled. “im, fine” His mouth pursed like he was just on the edge of qualifying that with a “sir”.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Rathenau’s car sat in a pool of commotion, men warning women and children away, the ground littered with shrapnel. All of them recoiled from him until he holstered his gun and brought out the elbows. “Out of the way! Get out of the _fucking_ way!” he shouted. And parted they did. Fuck. Fucking _shit_.  
  
The driver was slumped over sideways, bleeding but he couldn’t tell where. Still breathing. How the fuck, he didn’t know and he wasn’t going to ask. "Is anyone a doctor?" he shouted over the crowd. " _Anyone_? For Christ's sake— _help the man_!" And Rathenau—down in the back seat of the car, in what was left of the seat of the car. The fucking— God _bless_ reinforced steel the fucking chassis was still intact but the— Blood. Blood and mince. Hackfleisch, peppered with bullet holes.  
  
Fuck. “Not today,” he hissed through his teeth. “No, not fucking _today_ you son of a bitch.”  He hauled ass over the seat, looking down.  
  
Rathenau stared at him, limp, slack jawed and and dead.  
  
"Fuck," he breathed. "Goddamnit. _I told you to wait_."  
  
Prussia reached over the no man's land of the front passenger seat, where the dead man was smeared and still warm. He closed his eyes, remembered a word or two of his psalms, and left it to God to handle the rest.  
  
He stood, stumbled out of the car, and nearly lost his footing in the claustrophobic mass of his people. _Their_ people. Germany's people— only Lutz wasn't there. He would have seen the towheaded kid if he was; he stood head and awkward shoulders taller than the rest. _Where the fuck—_  
  
"Lutz!" he croaked. And he spotted him then all the way in the back, kneeling in the street, in his own shadow with the sun beating down on his back. Hadn't even moved. "Jesus fucking Christ what the fuck are you doing?" His voice wasn’t even his anymore and he was so, so goddamn tired of yelling.  
  
He stepped into his brother’s shadow, but his shadow was wrong. Lutz was holding his gut and his shadow was wrong. It came away from the ground, under the sole of his boot, and it smelled like the car. “ _Oh fuck me_.”  
  
Ludwig was bleeding out. Ludwig was bleeding out in the street. He was slumped in the mud, in the piss and shit of men and blood of his men and his grimy face was bone white in the darkness. “ _LUDWIG_!“ he grasped for him, his overgrown child, tried to get him flat. “ _I told you to apply fucking pressure_!” he screamed into his silence. He slapped him. Ludwig’s head rolled stupid and limp in the soil. And the rag in Prussia’s good hand was saturated with—he didn’t know what. It made a revolting wet splat when he threw it, tore off his jacket, and started stuffing the kid like a goose. There was no way to tell the depth of the wound through a thick glaze of clotted black blood, but _Jesus Christ_ it was a miracle his organs were still in his belly. His coat was no good. It wan’t enough. Not enough _anything_ ; no needle, no thread and no antiseptic and all he could do was kneel there in the middle of fucking Wallotstrasse, trembling and up to his elbows in gore.  
  
“Jesus fucking fuck you're gonna be fine," he hissed through the flecks of enamel on his lips. “You son of a bitch. You just fucking stood there. Fuck. Ludwig you can’t. I can't... you're too fucking _big_ for me, kiddo, _I can't carry you_ … Not like I used to.“ He pressed with one hand; struggled to undo his belt with the other. The blood just kept coming and it wasn't enough. He managed to get a slippery hand down and under him; just high enough to get one end of the belt underneath—he drew, pressed, fastened, and pulled—snapped the leather through the buckle and pulled but it wasn’t enough, and he couldn’t get him out and all he could do was pray: _not a shell. Not a shell._ Please Mary Mother of God not a shell— but fuck, no, it was wrong. There were no shells over the Wallotstrasse, there was no fire coming down on Berlin. They were not under fire. But Ludwig… Ludwig was bleeding out on the sidewalk with a sticky shape of a hand across his face and he was— he was—fuck he was just _holding it in_. He hollered deafly at somebody, _anyone, something. Do something, you fuckers. Don’t stand there gawking. Do something_. The blood didn’t stop. No, the fucking blood just kept coming and coming. He shoved his hand deeper, harder into the pit of the kid’s stomach. His neck prickled, the hair on his arms at attention, hackles raised, fist deep inside mottled flesh and his teeth grinding inside of his skull. _Do something. Do something. Why didn’t you just fucking do something?_  
  
Oh he was going to kill him.  
  
And when he woke up again, he was going to _find_ that gunman and he was gonna fucking kill him too.

**END OF PART I**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone who has waited patiently for this chapter and the chapters to come. Writing a terrorist attack from another era took a great deal of time to pull together properly. A special thanks for historia-vitae-magistras for going to hell and back to assist in the research.


End file.
